Thursday, May 3, 2007

The Ant and The Grasshopper

I recieved a conservative e-mail. Here's the e-mail and my reply.

The Ant and The GrasshopperOLD VERSION:The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself

MODERN VERSION:The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, "It's Not Easy Being Green."Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome." Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.Nancy Pelosi & John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill Clinton appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients.The ant loses the case.The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it.The ant has disappeared in the snow.The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote.

My Modern Version:The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.Come winter, the grasshopper calls his Republican friends in congressand secures a few no bid contracts in Iraq. He gets plenty of money and can live well anywhere he wants, but he decides he wants the ant's house as it's in a primo location.

He works with his rich developer friends and they apply to the city to claim immenent domain so they can put a highrise in where ant's house now sits (with a nice penthouse on top for grasshopper.)

The ant fights them. A small, free, weekly paper runs a story on his fight. The grasshopper's pals at Fox News run an inflamatory story on the ant claiming he doesn't take care of the home that he claims to love and is just looking for a bigger pay off from the tax payers money.

You see, the ant knows that we're all overtaxed as the wars wage on and the economy continues to stall and he cares about the environment, so he got rid of his wastefull lawn and put in a rock and cactus garden instead. His homeowners association cried foul and this is where Fox found their angle.

The attacks go further as the grasshopper, who never served his country at war attacks the ant's war records pointing out that ant only served two tours. "Why not three?" grasshopper asks, implying that ant was a coward.

Ant's boss feels that ant being in his employ with all the bad press is actually hurting his bottom line but he wants to stand by ant. The boss is offered a contract working on the sky rise that will go where ant's home now sits and he caves.

Ant now has no health insurance, is in jeapordy of losing his public assistance and has been arrested several times for vagrancy. He's recently turned to drink and his prospects for the future are not good. The view from grasshoppers place is spectacular.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote.

My next story will feature ant losing his job for writing long liberal e-mails from work.